Wood properties and uses of Sitka spruce in Britain
Lead Author: John Moore
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Lead Author: John Moore
Sitka spruce is the main conifer species grown in Great Britain and the commercial wood products industry is primarily based on this species. Wood from Sitka spruce is sawn into timber for use in construction, pallets/packaging and fencing, and is also used in the production of paper and panel products. Research into the wood properties and performance of products made from Sitka spruce has been undertaken in Great Britain for almost 90 years by a number of organisations and the results from this research are contained in a large number of published and unpublished sources.
This report collates and synthesises this research and is written for forest scientists, engineers, wood processors, and end users of wood products who are seeking a better understanding of the material properties and potential end uses of Sitka spruce. It is divided into three parts: (1) the origins of Sitka spruce, its introduction into Great Britain and its growth and management in this country; (2) Sitka spruce wood properties, including wood anatomy, general wood structure, and physical and mechanical properties; and (3) an overview of the end products that are currently produced from Sitka spruce or that could potentially be produced in the future.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.